1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to ray tracing a three-dimensional scene. In particular it relates to creating a hierarchy of bounding volumes for efficient ray tracing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Realistic methods of rendering a virtual three-dimensional scene include radiosity and ray tracing. Both methods are computationally intensive and cannot be performed in real time. Improvement in the speed of these rendering techniques is extremely useful.
Ray tracing can be accelerated by creating a hierarchy of bounding volumes for objects in a scene. As each ray is traced, the number of tests necessary to determine ray-object interactions is reduced considerably. However, creation of an efficient hierarchy of bounding volumes is itself a difficult problem, with many trade-offs between speed, quality and memory requirements. Complex strategies for resolving these conflicting requirements result in a reduction in the efficiency of code, or variations in quality that are difficult to predict. Complex strategies for creating a hierarchy of bounding volumes are therefore limited in their reliability.